


Too Good

by ColorfulStabwound



Series: Blue Neighborhood [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Blue Neighborood, Brothers, Canonical Character Death, Denial, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Godric's Hollow, Heavy Drinking, Jamie's Got A Secret, M/M, POV Third Person, TOO GOOD, dealing with death, mentally broken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 05:53:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5900833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColorfulStabwound/pseuds/ColorfulStabwound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You taste like Tanqueray.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Good

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely sure why this song inspired this particular tale, but I rarely question things like that and so here we are. If you have not read King and Lionheart, Papercut, and Fools, this wont really make a lick of sense to you, Sorry bout that. :D
> 
> Anyways, endless adoration and gratitude to my bestie, my muse, and my partner in crime, Unkissed.

_Too good_

 

That is the only decipherable thought that drags through his mind. He is flattened out, face up in the middle of an unmade bed, eyes closed and liquor on his breath. His fingers twist in damp bed sheets and his toes curl in upon one another—This is sensory overload, hello friend.

 

_“You taste like Tanqueray,” a_ voice, soft like the siren song of angels, whispers in his ear. He wants to smile but finds that he cannot and so he emits a soft, submissive sigh instead.

 

Fingertips walk up his thighs and leave scorched trails of burned flesh in their wake. He tries to squirm beneath the sting of the touch, but his body is dead weight. The delicate press of lips against his jawbone sends him reeling into they abyss and he rides that high like a master huntsman.

 

_All I need_

 

He thinks absently, eyes squeezed shut with the agony of ecstasy.

 

_“Don’t be scared,”_ the voice whispers in his ear, slowly pulling him back from a sea of nothingness and into the here and now. When his eyes flutter open the room is cast in shadows and he feels alone. The deafening tick of an ancient Grandfather clock in the hall makes him shiver and sweat because this isn’t where he wants to be right now. Truth be told, he **is** scared. Scared of waking up and realizing this is all just some sort of dream _just for tonight_.

 

He sits up just enough to reach for an uncapped bottle on the bedside table and brings it quickly to his mouth, eyes sliding closed as liquid guilt stains his lips.

 

_All I need_

 

He manages in a strangled whimper as he slides back against the pillows, empty bottle sliding out of his lazy grip and hitting the floor with a dull thud.

 

_“Breathe my love,”_ the voice in his ear is back and the soft puff of exhaled breath quickens his pulse. He is quickly and effortlessly lost in sensation and desperation, and even though the room is spinning all around him he feels terribly centered.

 

_Wasted on you_

 

He thinks with a smile that cracks an abused bottom lip right open and sets it flowing red. There is a moment, perhaps two, when he thinks that maybe this really _is_ a dream, but the delicate press of a warm body beside him makes him think otherwise. When he opens his eyes Scorpius is staring down at him, bathed in light from behind that makes him look like he’s wearing a crooked halo. _“Don’t be scared,”_ he says, and when he smiles, Albus feels it right down to his core.

 

“My love,” he says, green eyes shining with unshed tears and a sigh of relief lodged in his throat.

 

Scorpius smiles again and nods his head slowly as he lowers himself down to cover Albus’ body with his own, and they fit together so effortlessly that is stills his pulse to a crawl. Scorpius watches him for a long while, still wearing that smile that is a little too angelic to be believable. Albus’ fingers twist together painfully as Scorpius gently assaults him with kisses that burn his skin. He feels drunk and jaded and cheated, but somehow Scorpius cancels all of that out.

 

_“My love,”_ Scorpius whispers against his throat, and the words, though quiet, are deafening still.

 

 

Time has no meaning to him, as he lies helpless beneath Scorpius’ assault, a slave to emotions and sensations that he cannot let go of. Scorpius tastes every inch of his body and works him apart with excruciating precision, much too practiced to be innocuous or imagined.

 

_All I need_

 

He thinks as he is once again draped in Scorpius’ love. They come together with a belated sigh of relief that passes between them, a thousand glittering stars paying witness beyond smudged windows of this heart-shaped prison.

 

Albus is expertly balancing on the line of interim and too far gone and every time Scorpius presses deep inside of him it is like a tiny shove that leaves him gasping for much needed air. He knows this isn’t healthy and it really isn’t good for him, but he’s never been very good at taking his own advice and so his squeezes his eyes shut and gives it all up.

 

_“Don’t be scared,”_ Scorpius whispers against his mouth, and he is so completely juxtaposed that he is sent reeling towards a release that blacks out his vision and leaves him breathless.

 

“Stay with me,” Albus murmurs when he thinks he can finally form coherent words and phrases. His skin is sticky with cooling sweat that makes him shiver and there is a dull thud in the back of his head that makes him feel terribly alone. “Please,” he whimpers brokenly to the room that is void of anything but his own sadness and solitude. Tears stream out of the corners of his squeezed-shut eyes and his head shakes in denial because he doesn’t want to face the reality of his situation.

 

Albus is alone, and it hurts.

 

By the time he regains consciousness the sun has long since risen and would soon be setting again. He sits up in a sweat-soaked bed and rubs at his eyes with bent knuckles. He feels broken and worn out and it doesn’t even scare him anymore because he can no longer remember a time when he didn’t feel this way. It is with great effort that he manages to disengage from a relentless tangle of sheets and find his footing, only narrowly avoiding the discarded liquor bottle from the night before. He stumbles into the bathroom for a piss and stares at his own reflection and wonders who it is that he sees in the mirror now. There was a time when Albus Severus was on top of the world. He had a career and a life and a million screaming fans. His songs used to serve as the soundtrack to so many lives, even his own.

 

But that time is gone now—Taken straight to hell with the only person that ever really mattered.

 

Albus ignores the stack of unread post piling up on the inside of his door on the way out. Too many headlines that scream a truth he isn’t quite ready to face. When he steps outside he curses and scrambles for a pair of sunglasses in his coat pocket because the sunlight hurts his tired eyes. He knows he is slowly sliding right into a pit that he won’t be able to pull himself out of but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything at all anymore. He slips through the city unnoticed by those around him, navigating one street after another in a vain effort to outrun the demons on his heels. Somehow he finds himself in the moors behind his parents’ house and he manages a strangled laugh because he realizes he hadn’t really run anywhere at all except right into the thing that scares him the most.

 

He treads gently through the weedy marsh because this place is the closest to sacred ground that he thinks his feet will ever touch. He’s moving automatically towards the massive English Oak that serves as the centerpiece of the marsh and when he draws to a stop before it, he has trouble actually looking at it.

 

Of course, he looks at it every single day, depicted on a canvas that he can’t bear to throw away, but the real thing looks somehow less to his eyes. He wants to scream at the sky above and curse the ground beneath his feet because he feels cheated, but he’s too tired and he doesn’t have any fight left and so he presses his back up against the old tree and slides down to the ground in a heap of weary limbs.

  
When Albus closes his eyes he can clearly see a picture of two teenage boys running through this very place, navigating the sinking moor with a carefree air of souls who have all the time in the world. His eyes sting with tears that threaten to never stop and he clutches his head and twists his fingers painfully in his hair to force them to subside. He remains with the tree long after dark, lost in memories of times that he can never recapture, no matter how hard he tries.

 

Jamie comes looking for him when he misses dinner and when he finds his brother hunched and hugging his knees in the consuming mist of the marsh, he is struck uncharacteristically mute. James knows better than to press the subject of Scorpius Malfoy too far with Albus, but it does not stop him from closing the distance and taking up a seat beside him. “You should really eat something,” James says as he looks upon this broken version of his brother with a frown. He cannot fault Albus for the way he feels, and even though he would never breath a word of just how acquainted he used to be with Scorpius or how it hurt him too when Scorpius left, he felt connected to Albus in their unspoken shared loss.

 

“It’s not fair,” Albus’ words sound like a gasping whisper and James’ skin prickles with gooseflesh that has nothing to do with the steadily dropping temperature.

 

“Life rarely is.” James replies simply, and when he slides an arm around Albus’ shoulders, Albus does not shy away from the contact.

 

Jamie’s arm feels like a weighted anchor on Albus’ shoulders and he sighs heavily and drops his head against his brother’s shoulder. If this were any other time he would be questioning Jamie’s motives and why he was being so nice, but right now Albus is just thankful to have the solitude alleviated, even if only for a little while.  

 

Neither brother says anything at all for a long time, each lost in his own thoughts that are centered on a blond presence that unwittingly and forever altered so many lives. Albus wants to ask James to teach him how to care less because he thinks that it is the only way he can go on living with the pain of loss. James wants to tell Albus that it is okay to mourn, necessary even, but the guilt of his secret prevents him from doing or saying much of anything at all. “It hurts,” Albus whispers into the night, and James is more inclined to agree than Albus will ever know.

 

When Albus lays his head down the sun is already threatening to rise again. He stares up at the ceiling and contemplates how much he’ll have to drink to see Scorpius again. He has lived his life up until this point with the false ideas that he was strong enough to weather any storm. Albus has never been ashamed to be who he wanted to be and he has always taken what he’s wanted from this world because that is just part of who he is. He isn’t sure where to place the blame on his estrangement from Scorpius and although he _really_ wants to fault the blond, he finds that he cannot. He doesn’t understand why Scorpius did what he did or why he had to leave and in the center of it all, he blames himself for not trying just a little bit harder and a little bit sooner. Albus’ fingers curl around an uncapped bottle and bring it to his lips where he pauses; hand shaking and eyes squeezed shut.

 

_Too good_

 

He thinks to himself as he drinks until there is nothing left and then he waits because this really is all he needs.

 

_“You taste like Tanqueray.”_ A voice whispers in his ear and he smiles, a shaky sigh of relief escaping him.

 

_All I need_


End file.
